Dirty Edits - what are they?

[vegeta0585]

So I ran BOSS after installing Skyrim today and apparently pretty much every single mod I have (including the main skrim.esm, hearthfire.esm, dawnguard.esm) all have "dirty edits"

 

I dunno what this means, can anyone explain it? I havnt even run the game yet, im afraid installing 30+ mods without ever even running it is going to make it explode.

[stars2heaven]

I can almost guarantee that your game will not run if you have installed that many mods without testing them first unless you really know what you are doing. But anyways, dirty edits are edits that are made within a plugin that were either unintentional or simply edits that shouldn't have been made, even if they were done on purpose. For example, if you change the damage a sword makes in your mod and then test it out and then decide you liked it the way it was and change it back, your've just created a dirty edit. Even though the change is identical to the way it was before, your mod will now conflict with every other mod in existence that changes the damage of that weapon and could make those other mods stop working. That is why dirty edits are bad. Some can cause unintentional conflicts with other mods, and some can cause the game to CTD. You should clean your mds and master filse (NOT the Skyrim.esm master file though!!)

 

Here are some tutorials on how to clean your mods and master files. You can do the same with all your mods unless the mod author explicitly says not to. This video will go into more detail on what dirty edits are and why they are bad.

 

 

 

 

This will explain how to clean the masters (cleaning your mods is the same)

[steve40]

It is worth also mentioning "wild" edits, which TES5EDIT generally will not detect and clean. An example is how "Birds & Flocks" mod has unintentionally edited many references including Solitude Rock Arch, mountain peaks, cloud objects, pine trees, Word Wall triggers, acoustic spaces, camera attach effects, World Interaction triggers and Civil War triggers (see CK screenshots in spoiler below. The mod is BirdsHF.esp).

 

 

http://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/images/14718-1-1357173955.jpghttp://static.skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/images/14718-1-1357173829.jpg

 

 

^^ About half of these wild edits (38) remained after cleaning the mod with TES5EDIT, so I had to manually clean them further using the CK to ignore the edits. However, doing so created 38 more "new" ITM records that TES5EDIT was then able to detect correctly, so I had to clean the mod once more using TES5EDIT to obtain a final "fully clean" mod.

Edited January 3, 2013 by steve40

[vegeta0585]

Thanks much for the replies, its odd that the main files by bethesda have them1

 

However, I just did what I normally do, sorted with boss, made myself a bashed patch, made sure Wrye Bash said all was good, then ran the game.

 

Worked like a charm first time :) Been enjoying it for many many hours and all my mods are working great! So unless I run into any issues, I'm just gonna play it as is. If it aint broke, dont fix it, and its working so I dont wanna risk it XD